


bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Gen, and juggling pronouns is hard, female friendships are very strange, goat yoga, this is predominantly dialogue because they wouldn't shut up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 14:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16221158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: Paula grimaces. “I don't know. Maybe you guys should just go. I kind of feel like I’m too old for… all of that.”“Please. Age has nothing to do with it,” Valencia says, still disinterestedly scrolling through her phone. “There was a ninety three year old grandmother of six in one of my advanced classes and she ran rings around everybody else. And you’ve never seen Rebecca attempt a downward dog.”The gurl group does goat yoga.





	bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnhp-D4gdef/?taken-by=racheldoesstuff) delightful gem and all subsequent CEG cast goat yoga related social media. [Here](http://notbang.tumblr.com/post/177941359564) is some complementary art.

“We should do yoga,” Rebecca announces one morning at Sugar Face, leaning forward to slap her hands down on the table top.

“You hate yoga,” Paula and Valencia say at the same time, the only difference being Paula turning to stare at her in confusion while Valencia’s gaze remains firmly fixed on her phone screen.

“What? I don’t hate yoga. What gave you that idea?”

“Your general disdain for any and all kind of physical activity?” Heather suggests. Then, when she sees Rebecca open her mouth to retort she adds, “Don’t say sex. It doesn’t count.”

“Since getting out of the clink I’ve been doing some soul searching,” Rebecca says instead, putting on a dramatic air. “Being in jail really made me examine what’s important in life—”

“Rebecca, I wish you’d stop talking about that so loudly in here—people are starting to stare,” Valencia hisses, rolling her shoulders as she leans back in her seat.

“—and I want to up my friendship game. Which means more hashtag gurl group bonding activities, starting with yoga. Because it’s soothing, it’s relaxing, it’s spiritual. And it’s totally Valencia’s jam, so I thought we could all give it a try. Who’s with me?” 

Paula grimaces. “I don't know. Maybe you guys should just go. I kind of feel like I’m too old for… all of that.”

“Please. Age has _nothing_ to do with it,” Valencia says, still disinterestedly scrolling through her phone. “There was a ninety three year old grandmother of six in one of my advanced classes and she ran rings around everybody else. And you’ve never seen Rebecca attempt a downward dog.”

“Excuse me, but my downward dog has been nothing but well received, if you know what I’m saying,” Rebecca interjects, much to the group’s shared disgust. “I’m adequately flexible in all the ways it counts, and if you don’t believe me, I can supply references.”

“Since that list probably just consists of Paula’s boss and both of our exes, that’ll be a hard pass,” Heather says. “I am down for yoga, though. I could realign my chakras.”

“Well when you put it that way,” Paula says wryly, “it almost sounds fun.”

“C’mon, Paula—it’s going to be _so_ much fun. When was the last time we all did something together?”

“I mean, we’re all together right now,” Heather points out. “Eating donuts.”

“Eating donuts doesn’t count as an _activity_ ,” Rebecca says dismissively, putting on an exaggerated posh accent. “Anyway, it’s settled. Gurl group yoga, is a go-ga.” She grins expectantly at them only to receive three pairs of bemused raised eyebrows in return. “No? Nobody? _God_ , you’re all un-fun.”

She rolls her eyes and grumbles around the oversized chunk of donut she stuffs inside her mouth.

*

Valencia frowns as she pulls up alongside Paula’s minivan in the dusty, unmarked parking lot. “Are you sure this is it?”

“Between Waze and the fact that Rebecca and Paula are just right over there?” Heather asks slowly. “Yeah, I’d say there’s a good chance we’re in the right spot. You know, we really could have all just carpooled. Probably would have made more sense, since Rebecca and I live at the same—”

“How did you find this place, anyway?” Valencia interrupts, bumping the driver side door shut with her hip and and activating the central locking.

“Oh, I didn’t. Rebecca saw it on Instagram, I think. She’s supposed to only be slowly weaning herself back onto social media, but she says just checking local hashtags doesn’t count.”

Valencia stops in her tracks. “Heather! You actually let _Rebecca_ choose the studio?”

“What? Yoga’s yoga. Like, I get as an ex-instructor you’re probably a bit of a snob about it, but what’s the worst that could happen?”

They make their way over towards where Rebecca and Paula are waiting for them beside what can only be described as a dilapidated barn, Rebecca stretching her limbs in giddy anticipation and making up for what she lacks in technique with unbridled enthusiasm.

“Well fancy that—the gang’s all here,” she says, returning to an upright position and slipping into her token transatlantic accent.

“ _What_ is that smell?” Valencia demands, flinging back her sunglasses as her other hand takes accusatory root on her hip. “You picked something weird, didn’t you? I _told_ you guys she’d pick something weird. She never picks anything normal.”

“Which is what makes her so fun,” Paula says pointedly, eyebrows raised. She rests her hands on Rebecca’s slowly slumping shoulders. “Right, ladies?”

Heather’s gaze drifts between Paula’s glare and Rebecca’s dejected pout. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

Recovering relatively quickly, Rebecca yanks her Harvard shirt back down from where it’s ridden up over her leggings as a result of her preparatory lunges. “Class starts in ten minutes. Let’s go choose our mats.”

Obediently shuffling in behind her, they all blink as their eyes adjust to the cool shade of the entryway, Rebecca immediately making a beeline for the front desk to sign them in.

“It’s not a very relaxing atmosphere,” Valencia says with a sniff, looking down her nose at the rustic decor. “Where are all the candles?”

“Oh, we figured out early on that it’s not a good idea to have naked flames around wild animals,” a voice offers from behind them. “Hi, I’m Krista—welcome to the studio.”

“Wild animals?” Valencia repeats, eyelashes stuttering wildly.

Even Paula fixes Rebecca with a dubious look. “Okay, honey—what exactly have you booked us in for?”

Her earlier flash of hurt apparently entirely forgotten, Rebecca bounces on the balls of her feet, hands clasped behind her back.

“I already told you guys. It’s Goga,” she announces with barely contained excitement. At the three blank looks she receives in return she elaborates, “Goat yoga. Its’s yoga, but with goats.”

“Goats?” Valencia echoes, her tone somehow managing to convey her very precise feelings on any and all kinds of farm animals. “Okay, that’s it—I'm leaving. If you guys want to meet up at Sugar Face later, that’s fine, but—”

“What? Valencia, no, you can’t leave! This is a group bonding activity.” She gestures emphatically between them. “With the whole group. And I picked this for—” She trails off, grabbing Valencia by the elbow to tug her gently aside, dropping her voice. “I picked this for you. For us. Because it’s kind of how we first met. Properly, after the market, and I was terrible and you were kind of mean but then afterwards we had lunch and talked about the studio, and then we hung out on my couch—right? And I know it’s a little weird, or whatever, but that’s what’s supposed to make it fun. So please? For me? Your good friend that just got out of jail and is trying to make an effort to reforge all her friendships?”

Valencia doesn’t budge for a moment, keeping her arms firmly crossed against her chest. But then the puppy dog eyes in the periphery of her vision start to get to her and she relents, rolling her eyes and looking to Heather and Paula for help. “ _Fine._ Only because I’m already here. But how many times are you going to play the just-got-out-of-prison card?”

“Oh, I’m milking that goat ’til it’s dead,” Rebecca supplies happily, and all but skips towards the front of the room.

*

“Ugh, it is so good to just de-stress, you know? And with going back to work on Monday and having to see Nathaniel and knowing he’s going to be all snippy and mopey and mad like I just kicked his metaphorical puppy, I can practically feel the knots dividing and multiplying in my back in advance.”

Rebecca groans appreciatively as she leans into her pose, joints popping audibly as she stretches. She glances around at the other members of the class shifting into _bakasana_ with minimal fuss, immediately writes it off as unachievable and settles for her own approximation that she’s sure looks something more like a toad than a crow.

Paula cocks her head as she grunts and struggles to do the same. “Yeah—what’s the deal going to be with the two of you now, anyway?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, he like, ditched his live-in girlfriend to represent you,” Heather takes it upon herself to tonelessly recap, balancing effortlessly on her palms and holding it before dropping back down onto the balls of her feet. “But then you had that fight after the hearing—”

“Ugh, enough with all the talk about menfolk, am I right?” Rebecca groans, exaggeratedly loud. She lowers her voice at the twin glares she receives from the couple in front. “You guys. This is supposed to be a strictly Bechdel test passing activity. Which means the only person allowed to talk about their love life today is Valencia. Valencia? Any romantic anecdotes to share?”

Valencia remains tight-lipped and stubbornly maintains her dolphin pose despite the attempts at conversation on her left and the goat making a pass at her stray hairs to her right.

“Ssh,” she hisses. “I’m trying to focus. Which, for the record, is becoming increasingly hard with billy goat gruff over here trying to chow down on my ponytail,” she all but growls, following up with a venomously saccharine smile at the handler as she tugs the animal in question away.

Their instructor watches with amusement and takes it as her cue to introduce their bearded companions.

“As you’ve all probably noticed by now, we have a couple of special guests joining us for our class today. This over here is Caramel, and this is Cookie,” Krista says, indicating the two sable coloured baby goats to the class.

“Well hey,” Paula whispers, elbowing Rebecca in the side. “I like that one.”

Cookie takes Valencia’s bowed back as an open invitation, earning a horrified grunt from the woman in question. When its chosen human rock ledge starts to squirm uncomfortably beneath it, the goat quickly fixes its sights on Rebecca instead, much to her delight. She hunches lower to the ground in an attempt to coax the animal further forward, stifling giggles as it balances, precarious but unconcerned, along the unsteady curve of her spine.

Krista pauses alongside Valencia to observe. “Nice. Your posture is good but you’re holding a lot of tension in your upper body. If you relaxed your arms a little—”

Valencia gasps in outrage. “My posture is _impeccable,_ and if I’m holding tension in my arms it’s because there was a stupid sheep—”

“Goat,” Rebecca corrects helpfully, twisting her head towards her.

“— _goat_ digging its dirty hooves into my shoulder blades.”

“Honestly, I’m really loving the massage. Those trotters get into the muscles in my back in a way the human hand just can’t?”

“Rebecca failed my beginner’s yoga class,” Valencia announces in an attempt to divert Krista’s constructive criticisms.

“Hey! You said they don’t give grades!”

“We _don’t_ , but you wouldn’t stop bugging me until I did,” she shoots back. “Just face it, Rebecca—you don’t have a bendy bone in your body.”

“I can be bendy,” Rebecca mutters, pushing properly up onto all fours and stubbornly thrusting her butt into the air. “I can be _so_ bendy. Bendy like a Red Vine.”

“I will literally pay you to stop talking about your liquorice fetish,” Heather says, swivelling around, eyes wide. 

Krista blinks and presses her hands together. “Okay, well, this isn’t a competition. Everybody is more than welcome to move at their own pace. This one’s all about letting loose and having fun. Just make sure you don’t hurt yourselves, okay?”

“Hey, man. What is with you today?” Heather asks once Krista has moved on, reclining back on her hands. “You’re kind of crabby. Maybe you should focus on opening your throat chakra and like, communicate your feelings.”

“My _feelings_ ,” Valencia says through gritted teeth, “are that yoga shouldn’t be done in a barn. It should be done in a studio. With temperature control, and proper floors. The air in here is giving me a tension headache.” 

She tugs her hair out of its tiny bun and shakes out the locks, combing her fingers through and massaging her scalp.

“Careful,” Paula says from her half-hearted warrior pose. “Looks like you just lost an earring, there.”

Valencia gasps, hands flying to her ears. “What?”

“Yeah, something small and shiny just went flying across the room.”

“No,” Valencia says. “No, no, no, _no._ That earring is a half carat diamond and a present from Beth and I _cannot_ lose it on a dusty farmhouse floor.”

“Hey, relax, Valencia—we’ll find it,” Rebecca insists, already shuffling forward on her hands and knees to scour for the missing stud. “Oof, sorry—walking cat pose coming through. Yoga in motion—it’s the latest thing. Ow. Sorry, my bad. I’m just gonna squeeze through you guys—”

“Found it,” Paula calls out, sitting back on her haunches and pointing in the direction of Krista’s feet.

“Thank god,” Valencia says, breathing a sigh of relief.

Approximately two seconds before Caramel sniffs at the floor and swallows the stud whole.

* 

“So Krista says it’s NBD—goats swallow weird shit all the time. We just have to kind of… wait for it to come out. On the upside, now you’ll definitely know if they’re real or not,” Rebecca adds in an attempt to lighten the mood. “It’s probably gonna have to be a diamond to survive a trip through a cast-iron goat gut.”

Valencia’s response is a withering glare as she yanks out the other earring to grip it securely in her palm.

“My ex boyfriend’s dog swallowed his weed once,” Heather offers, rubbing her palm up and down Valencia’s arm in what she hopes is a consolatory way. “Came right out the other end good as new. Hosed it off and rolled himself a fat one. What? It was in a bag,” she says defensively at Paula’s disgusted look.

Valencia shrugs off Heather’s hand and moves towards the pigeon holes at the back of the room to gather her things, sighing irritably. Rebecca trudges along behind her, frowning, finally giving into the nagging feeling that something hasn’t been quite right all along.

“Valencia, are you mad at me? About something other than the earring?”

“What?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “No, I’m not mad. Why would I be mad?”

“I mean, you have been kind of abrupt with her since she got home,” Heather says as they all congregate at the back of the barn. “Just as, like, a general observation.”

“I know you weren’t exactly enthused about coming today, but—”

“Oh my god, it’s not because of the stupid yoga! It’s because I’m on Nathaniel’s side,” Valencia snaps suddenly, then slams her eyes shut, nostrils flaring and breathing deep. 

Rebecca blinks and scrunches up her face, completely and utterly confused. “Wait… what?”

“Not, like, properly on his side, obviously, because he’s acting like a twelve year old boy throwing a tantrum right now and it’s _really_ unbecoming, but I get why he’s mad. I do. You pleading guilty was really stupid, Rebecca. Not that your defence plan was the greatest, either, but you’re supposed to be the smartest person I know, and you keep doing the dumbest things. And everyone else acted like it was heroic, or something—”

“No, I definitely thought the whole thing was just a big hot mess,” Heather contradicts.

“ _Paula_ acted like it was this big, meaningful gesture—”

“Well, hey now, hold on a second,” Paula jumps in, holding up a hand, but Valencia barrels on.

“—and you were _happy,_ like it was something that you wanted? And it’s not the first time you’ve done this, Rebecca.” Valencia crosses her arms over her chest. “You keep doing these things, and you keep _leaving_ , with no concern for the people that have to stay behind. And you make _me_ feel stupid, because you inspire me even though I kind of hate it, but not when you’re doing… that.”

They all stare at her for a moment, taken aback. Heather shifts uncomfortably on her feet and twists a coloured highlight absently around her forefinger while Rebecca attempts to process her surprise.

“Wow,” Paula says eventually, for lack of a comment from anybody else.

Rebecca’s eyebrows are still busy knotting hard in the middle of her wrinkled forehead. “Oh. Valencia…”

“Do _not_ touch me,” Valencia warns. “Do not cry and do not hug me. I’m serious, Rebecca.”

It’s no use, though, because Rebecca flings her arms around her so snugly her elbows are practically touching, squeezing her ramrod-stiff friend as tight as she can for an excessive stretch of seconds before she sniffles and beckons her two remaining girls over to join the throng.

“You guys,” she chokes into Valencia’s hay-matted hair. “I don’t deserve any of you.”

“Not even a little bit,” Heather agrees. “But here we are. Doing goat yoga.”

“Valencia, I am so sorry,” Rebecca says, pulling back enough to search for her hand and squeeze it. “You’re right. I can be really selfish, even when I think I’m doing the right thing. _Especially_ when I think I’m doing the right thing.” She exchanges a meaningful glance with Paula. “But please believe me when I say nothing I’ve ever done has ever been about leaving any of you behind.”

“I mean, there was that time you imparted, like, a whole bunch of scathing remarks then ran away to New York, so,” Heather points out.

“Yeah—you _also_ kind of ran back to New York without telling anybody as soon as you found out Josh was staying with Valencia after you two kissed,” Paula adds in with a dismissive shrug. She waves her hand. “But water under the bridge pose.”

“Okay,” Rebecca concedes. “Okay. So maybe I’m a little too good at running away. But I always come back! And you know why? Because of you guys. Because you’re my family now. And I’m not going to apologise for that. Because it’s running away that brought me to West Covina in the first place. That brought me to all of you.”

She draws them all back into her bearhug, disheartened as always by any reflection upon her friendship misgivings and desperate to placate herself with the reassurance of their closeness, finding herself more than a little misty-eyed.

“This is fun and all but I recently pushed a human child out of my vagina, and my bladder control is _not_ back where I’d like it to be, so maybe, like, watch it with where you’re applying pressure.”

They all grimace and loosen their grip on Heather accordingly.

“You guys smell _really_ sweaty,” Valencia informs them flatly, voice muffled by the bodies still sandwiching hers.

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t sweat. I expunge toxins, which is completely different.”

“What, it’s not enough that you’re skinny and have flawless skin, now? You want me to believe you don’t sweat, too?” Paula gripes, rolling her eyes, though her tone lacks any actual resentment.

Valencia makes it approximately thirty seconds longer before breaking form, elbowing her way out and maintaining a defensive tension in her shoulders that has Rebecca staring miserably after her, wringing her hands, doe-eyed and dejected as she heads for the door.

“Valencia, wait—where are you going? The class isn’t over yet.”

“Rebecca, this really isn’t my scene, okay? I just want to go home, and shower, and brush the straw out of my hair and light some candles so I can smell something other than dirty barn air while I think of a way to explain to my girlfriend that one of the diamond earrings she gave me for our anniversary that I was going to wear to the fancy Thanksgiving dinner she’s taking me to next month just became some farm animal’s breakfast.”

She fumbles in her bag for her sunglasses before striding for her car, leaving Rebecca, Paula and Heather standing at the edge of the dirt parking lot in her wake. The sound of her door slamming shut echoes oddly in the open space.

“Cool,” Heather says after a moment, twisting her lips. “So just checking, but I can like, totally carpool with you guys, right? Because she was my ride, so.”

Rebecca’s shoulders sag as she watches Valencia drive away.

*

Valencia’s already waiting when she trudges into to Sugar Face late the following afternoon with a smothered yawn, practically collapsing upper-body-first towards a table. 

“Thanks for meeting me. I, uh… I got you a present.” Rebecca fishes in her pocket then drops the diamond stud on the countertop in front of Valencia before sitting down, sliding a conciliatory coffee towards her as a follow-up. “And before you ask—yes, it has been disinfected and no, you’re not gonna get rabies or anything. It’s completely sterile. Well, except for whatever germs you can contract from my jeans and a donuteria table, I guess. Which could definitely be long and varied.”

There’s a long moment where Valencia simply stares at the earring in front of her before caving and reaching forward with one drapey-sleeved arm to retrieve it, rolling the stud back and forth between her forefinger and thumb in contemplation. Once it’s stowed away safely in her purse she settles back in her seat and turns to regarding Rebecca’s outfit with thinly concealed judgment.

“God, you bought one of those dumb shirts?”

Rebecca glances down at the ill-fitted, oversized men’s t-shirt with _NAA-MAA-STE_ emblazoned across the front—the only size available in the gift shop that adequately accommodated her ample chest—and winces. “Yeah, I didn’t really have a choice? My other shirt kind of got covered in poop, so.”

Valencia wrinkles her nose and takes another sip of her drink while Rebecca plucks at the navy cotton.

“Is this vaguely offensive? I couldn't tell, and it was either this or a picture of a goat eating a yoga strap that said ‘ _om_ -nom-nom’. Then again an argument could be made that the whole Western yoga studio craze in itself is a blatant form of cultural appropriation—not that I’m criticising you or calling your past endeavours in any way insensitive,” she adds quickly. 

Valencia pulls an irritated, uncomprehending face. “Huh?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing. White people are the worst.”

An awkward silence settles over them that sends an anxious bloom bubbling up in Rebecca’s chest, all too aware that this isn’t the first time she’s sat here opposite Valencia, desperate for forgiveness. It doesn’t make it any better that this time she never saw it coming; she’s always had more than enough trouble navigating the complex minefield of her own emotions, let alone the unexpected ones she manages to bring out in her friends, but at least she’s usually self aware enough to retrospectively realise what she’s done wrong.

“Valencia,” Rebecca says after a moment, fidgeting on her chair because she’s never been good with sitting still or staying quiet. 

She receives a perfectly manicured, coolly arched eyebrow in return and takes it as permission to reach across to grab her friend’s hand in her own.

“ _Please_ tell me you washed your hands at least eight times with soap before—”

“I love you, Valencia. I hope you know that.” When Valencia starts to pull away she squeezes tighter, stopping her. “And you should know by now you’re not getting rid of me that easy. In case you’ve forgotten, I literally kidnapped you to force you to be my friend. And I know you’re mad at me for—”

Valencia lets out a frustrated sigh and snatches back her hand in favour of gripping her coffee cup so hard her knuckles turn white. “Rebecca, I’m not mad _at_ you, okay. Not anymore. I’m just kind of… generally irritated, and it’s all very messy and complicated, because nothing I’ve ever felt about you has ever been simple. But I’ll get over it. Sometimes people just need space. You can’t just expect to fix everything with hugs and donuts and federal abduction all the time.”

“Hey,” Rebecca interjects with a raised finger, “it was not across state lines.” She shakes her head. “Sorry, not the point.”

When Valencia’s gaze refuses to lift past the end of her nose Rebecca deflates, resigned, and gets to her feet. “Well, I guess I’ll give you some space, then.”

She scoops up her take-away donut box and starts shuffling back towards the exit.

“Uh, where do you think you’re going?” At Rebecca’s confused look Valencia raises her eyebrows, blinks and elaborates, “Someone offered to pay for this lunch and it wasn’t me. So plant your apologetic butt cheeks back on that seat and you can start by telling me what’s going on between you and Nathaniel. And I don’t care if that fails some stupid test because being a feminist is really exhausting and confusing sometimes and I kind of just want everything to feel normal again, so let’s just talk about dumb stuff, okay?”

“Okay,” Rebecca agrees as she eagerly slides back into her seat, relieved. “I can do dumb stuff. I’m great at dumb stuff. Whole lotta dumb stuff, coming right up.” She pauses to set her donut back on the table. “Hey, but no boy talk, though. And not because of any test. I’m just… done with that, for awhile, you know? For real, this time. I meant it when I said I want to focus on my friends. So instead of that, how about I tell you about all of the fun things I found inside the goat poop that _weren’t_ your earring? Your face says no, but I’m just going to take it as a yes…”

*

“Anyway, I’ve decided to just go for it. I’m turning over all the new leaves; carpe-ing all the diems. Grabbing the goat by the horns, as it were.” At the unimpressed look on Valencia’s face she gives an apologetic shrug. “Sorry… no more goat puns, I promise.”

Having finished both their lunches and the natural course of the conversation, Rebecca reluctantly mirrors Valencia’s movements as she rises and gathers their rubbish, only hesitating a moment before going for an affectionate bump of her shoulder against hers and letting out a quiet breath of relief at the tiniest twitch of Valencia’s lips she sees in response.

“Hey, I know you said you’re not technically mad at me, but Valencia… you forgive me, right?”

Valencia picks at the sleeve of her empty coffee cup in lieu of meeting her eyes. “I mean, you did stay up all night to dig through sheep poop for me.”

“Goat. It was a goat,” Rebecca corrects in an overly casual manner that does exactly nothing to conceal how much her friend’s ongoing misnomering is driving her crazy. “It’s called goat yoga, not sheep yoga. But they’re similar animals I guess, so no biggie. And hey—now you can wear your diamond earrings to Thanksgiving dinner just like you planned.”

“Please. I’m never wearing that earring again. It’s been inside livestock intestines, Rebecca. Don’t be gross.” 

Rebecca frowns and opens her mouth to protest but Valencia beats her to the punch.

“Now that you’ve got it back I’ll probably get Beth to return them to the store and exchange them for something not poop-infested. She does all the bookkeeping for our business, so she’s really good with receipts and negotiating refund policies. It’s kind of sexy.”

Rebecca pulls a face. “You know, I’m not sure of the moral implications of returning earrings that have been inside both your ears and the digestive tract of a goat, but I’m also not really one to talk, so I’m going to let that slide.” They reach the edge of the parking lot and she hesitates, not quite ready to part ways. “Hey, Valencia? Heather and I were going to watch Hocus Pocus tonight if you wanted to come over,” she ventures, so hesitant and hopeful she’s pretty sure it borders on pathetic.

Valencia hoists her purse higher on her shoulder, considering. “Well. Beth is out of town until Tuesday and the fridge in my apartment _is_ looking a little bare.”

“All you can eat sushi and a couple of bottles of rosé,” Rebecca says, to sweeten the deal. “My shout. I’ll even spring for the mid-range stuff—not just the one that’s six dollars on special. Seriously, it’s on me. You don’t have to chip in a cent.”

There’s a short, contemplative silence that has her squeezing her fingers into fists in nervous anticipation.

“No duh,” Valencia says, then gives her a tiny smile, finally, and Rebecca beams back at her until the muscles of her mouth start to burn.


End file.
